Staff Reporter Peshawar
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan and Provincial Education Minister Shahram Khan Tarakai on Friday inaugurated a mega project of provision of furniture to students of public sector schools across the province.
Talking to the media persons on the occasion Shahram Tarakai said with an estimated cost of Rs 6 billion, school furniture was being provided to 2.4 million male and female students across the province.
Provision of basic facilities to students was our aim that would be achieved under the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, now every student would have a chair to sit on, Shahram said, adding that in the first phase 1.2 million students would be provided new furniture with an estimated cost of Rs3 billion while in the second phase the same number of students would be provided furniture of Rs3 billion.
With this revolutionary step, he said the culture of students sitting on mats (taat) would be eliminated from the province.
The Education Department has achieved some notable feats during the last three years, as second shift classes have been started to accommodate and enroll out of schoolchildren.
In the first phase, he said the second shift classes have been started in 1200 schools of the province, accommodating nearly 3000 students. He said for the second phase 230 schools have been selected to start the second shift.
The KP Education Minister said, “we helped the students to get rid of heavy school bags by introducing the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa School Bag Act”. Besides, he said following the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan, one million saplings were planted in 4000 schools under the Clean and Green Pakistan campaign.
To facilitate the students, the minister said Students Facilitation Centres were established at all the educational boards, which were providing all basic information to the students under one roof.
To streamline the affairs of transfers and postings in the Education Department, government has introduced an e-transfer policy under which all the transfers and postings were now taking place online and in a fair and transparent manner.
For the current year, he said a target of enrolling 0.8 million students was set, however we surpassed this figure by enrolling 965,000 students in government schools, which was a big achievement. Regarding the transparency in examinations, the minister said CCTV monitoring systems were adopted at examination halls.
“We provided SNC books from Grade-1 to Grade-5 students”, the minister said. He further said that in the second phase students from Grade-6 to 12 would be provided books.
Shahram said to provide recreational facilities to the students, KP Cricket League under-16 was introduced at schools in which 300 teams comprising 4000 students would take part in practice sessions. 585 matches would be played under the league in one month, he said.
